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Walk down Wellington Street in Hintonburg, and you’ll notice that every second block or so is dotted with a marble sculpture shaped like a fire hydrant. Or, more accurately, half-shaped: each statue morphs into an image that represents the neighbourhood. So a stack of books outside the library, a corncob near the farmer’s market, that sort of thing.

The hydrants were installed in 2010, after the city tore up and rebuilt Wellington Street. (Ottawa sets aside one percent of the cost of major public infrastructure projects, like street reconstruction, for public art.) And they were immediately divisive. I remember walking past the sculptures and thinking, okay, they’re kind of kitschy, but whatever. Some people, though, hated them. Like, fury-of-a-hundred-suns-going-nova hated them.

Then this happened:

Get all your Wellington West, Hintonburg and sure even some Westboro gossip here. Remember, us hydrants hear and see everything.

The Marble Hydrants twitter account has been going strong since, gently poking fun at the habits of this rapidly-gentrifying neighbourhood. (Sample tweet: “Rise in temperature may result in an increase of Birkenstocks, fedoras, fixed gear bicycles and Ray-Bans. #Hintonburg”)

People have often wondered who's running it, including myself. But whoever’s behind the account, it’s not Ryan Lotecki.

“It’s rewarding, in a lot of ways, to create something and then release it to the public and have the public take it on as a character, animating it, giving it a voice,” says Lotecki, a former Hintonburg resident who sculpted nine of the 18 statues, as we chat in the parkette that houses one shaped like a beehive.

I think Hintonburg’s gradually come to identify with the hydrants. And I wonder if the Twitter account didn’t have something to do with that change. Instead of simply being goofy slabs of rock, the hydrants are now kind of like that snarky friend who hangs out at the local coffee shop.

They've got that voice.

Then again, maybe it was just inertia—as Lotecki says, those 18 marble sculptures are “going to outlive everyone here.” So I guess we should probably get used to them.

And that has me wondering: when did I feel I was part of this neighbourhood? It might’ve been

when I started writing about Hintonburg, chatting up local business owners, paying attention to new condo developments and park improvements and whatnot. Interacting with the community, essentially, much like the Marble Hydrants twitter account.

Or maybe I just got used to the idea of being from here. Maybe, like the hydrants, I eventually became part of the streetscape. Who knows. Like public art, the meaning of these things is rarely clear.

Found in group

My daily commute is like a small gear of mechanical time, of epicycles upon epicycles, where days turn to months and to years, and the seasons cycle through. The rhythms of time are constant, but the changes they bring are not.

It’s easy to mock Hintonburg’s sudden emergence as Ottawa’s hotspot for adventures in gastronomy. But honestly, access to good food and drink is possibly the best consequence of high-speed gentrification.

Condos are kind of a social minefield. Tell someone you’re in favour of smart intensification, and they’ll hear you’re a pro-development shill who hates children and cyclists. Ask for a few community benefits with that 42-storey monstrosity, and you’re a granola-munching communist.

Walk down Wellington Street in Hintonburg, and you’ll notice that every second block or so is dotted with a marble sculpture shaped like a fire hydrant. Or, more accurately, half-shaped: each
statue morphs into an image that represents the neighbourhood. So a stack of books outside the library, a corncob near the farmer’s market, that sort of thing.

A casual tourist to Hintonburg (not that we get too many; they tend to get sucked into the vortex that is Parliament Hill) might not think the neighbourhood needs a social service hub. After all, Wellington Street has gastropubs! Cupcake shops! Vendors hawking the latest baby paraphernalia! Who would use a community kitchen?

In many ways, the Elmdale is a metaphor for rapidly-gentrifying Hintonburg. Before I moved here, in 2006, Hintonburg was a pretty shady place. Sex workers hung out on the main strip. Residents found syringes and used condoms in the parks.